My darling wife, all too aware that I’ve been spending far too much time in my office, recently picked me up a gift, a little compact video camera that fits (literally) in the palm of my hand. After nearly a year, my western novel is just about finished, I’m burned out on the printed word and in need of a break. Clever gal knew exactly what I needed.

So…here’s my latest short movie, the first effort made with my brand new Kodak “PlayFull” video camera. This piece is a simple, straightforward adaptation of one of my short-short efforts, “Suspicious Mind”, a prose poem over 20 years old (but still packs a wallop). Let me know what you think…

This project began as a musical piece which turned out so well, I decided it might make a strange and unsettling soundtrack for an original movie. Sherron and I shot footage over two days and then loaded the images from our two cameras on to iMovie (a process rendered extremely difficult because of the age of my DV camera). I commenced editing, spending many long hours shaping the footage to the music, even concocting a kind of/sort of narrative.

You can view the film here and then, I hope, either drop a comment on my blog or over at YouTube:

I won’t try to summarize or explain “Beautiful Desolation” except to say that even on a planet that now boasts over six billion souls, there are still places where one can gain a profound impression of isolation, neglect, Nature reclaiming her own.

Enjoy the movie and I hope it inspires some thought and reflection. Perhaps it will cause you to contemplate the place where you live and view it in an entirely different light.

We’re fast approaching the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. My recollections of that day are very clear; it made a deep and long-lasting psychic impression on me. I’ve tried to express something of that magical time in this short film, titled “July 20, 1969”. My wife Sherron helped me put this snippet together (using the wonders of this here new iMac). The pictures are from the public domain, the music plucked from Garageband…the text derived from a short prose work I completed years ago.

This anniversary (Apollo 11) seems to be affecting me more than this sort of thing usually does. I firmly believe watching those fuzzy pictures from 250,000 miles away was an absolutely seminal moment from my childhood, those few days igniting my fascination with science fiction, other worlds, distant spaces, journeys into darkness, etc. I’m pleased to be able to pay tribute to the exploits and achievements of the Apollo program and I hope our little film gives some small hint of the sense of wonder and excitement I felt back then…emotions I retain today when I look at the pictures, see their faces, and have a clearer understanding of the daunting obstacles they faced, the sacrifices they made and the grandness of vision our forays into space represent.

This film is dedicated to the lads of Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins

ABOUT CLIFF BURNS:

I have been an independent author and publisher for thirty years. I've written eleven books (novels, short story collections & poetry), including DISLOYAL SON, SO DARK THE NIGHT and SEX & OTHER ACTS OF THE IMAGINATION. In the past three decades over one hundred of my tales have appeared in anthologies and publications around the world.